


Indeed There Will Be Time

by christmasinacup



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 17:25:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15778680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/christmasinacup/pseuds/christmasinacup
Summary: Set roughly 20 years after the events of the Anastasia musical, Gleb Vaganov and Anya have gone separate ways and have lived separate lives. One day Anya is inspired to write to the Communist Officer who spared her life, but she never expected him to reply...





	Indeed There Will Be Time

The Communist Party had been good to Gleb Vaganov. After the Anastasia fiasco he fully expected to get fired at least, sentenced to treason and put on trial at worse. Yet he was met with almost open arms when he returned from Paris. Sure, his leash was a little tighter and there were more eyes on him, but he was able to remain part of the Party. He was demoted from General to Deputy Commissioner, but that didn’t bother him. He was given more paperwork than ever before, which kept him busy and didn’t let his mind wander. 

The Communist Party had been good to Gleb Vaganov. His superior introduced him to his wife’s younger sister at one point in time, and before he knew it there was a modest wedding and his government-issued Soviet flat was suddenly twice as small. But she was pretty, and loyal, and worked hard at whatever she did. And it didn’t hurt that she helped him remain on good terms with his boss. 

The Communist Party had been good to Gleb Vaganov. When the Great Patriotic War rolled around, he was not sent to the front lines; he was not sent past Leningrad. This proved helpful in September of 1941, as Gleb was instrumental in preserving the city and its inhabitants during the Nazi Siege of Leningrad. 

The Communist Party had been good to Gleb Vaganov. Despite all the trials and tribulations his motherland had suffered, his family never went without food or without tea or without sufficient clothing. His son was never forced to enlist, never sent to the Gulags despite a heavy flirtation with jazz music. His daughter was one of the finest Komsomol members in all of the Soviet Union. 

And yet, despite all the good it had brought into his life, Gleb Vaganov’s faith in the Communist Party had been waning since Paris. And, if he was being honest with himself, since before he joined in the first place. The Gleb of the 1920s who was pulling the company line, insisting that communism was the answer and as soon as the bourgeoisie were defeated the proletariat would reap all the rewards and then everything would be better, had been slowly fading for 30 years. It was hard to deny the plagues that communism had brought to his beloved country.

The Communist Party had been good to Gleb Vaganov, which is why he kept such thoughts to himself and continued to preach the splendors of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. 

The Communist Party had been good to Gleb Vaganov, which is why he didn’t rock the boat. Gleb was satisfied with just filling out paperwork and watching his family grow. He refused to make waves again, after what had happened in Paris. The Party was not known to give second chances, let alone triple chances. Gleb could keep his head down, his voice quiet, his opinions to himself. 

The Communist Party had been good to Gleb Vaganov, which is why he was conflicted when one day he received a letter from one Anya Johnson. An English surname for sure, but written in perfect Cyrillic. Was it the same Anya he hoped it could be? Was reading the letter more trouble than it was worth?  
\----------------------------------------------------------------------------  
The Communist Party had been bad to Anastasia Nikoelevna Romanova. At age seventeen, her entire family was killed at gun point right in front of her. Amnesia brought on after a hard hit to the head in Yekaterinburg left her nameless, homeless, and desperate. After managing to escape she bounced all around Russia in hospitals and various side jobs until she wound up in Saint Petersburg, no, Leningrad, again. 

The Communist Party had been bad to Anya. Instead of a warm homecoming she was met with bitter winter, a home with a title she did not recognize, and nothing to her name. She was simply a cog in the communist machine. 

The Communist Party had been bad to Anya, even after she had escaped to Paris in an effort to recover her past. After finding her only living relative, the Dowager Empress, and realizing who she was and had been, the Party had tried to have her assassinated. 

The Communist Party had been bad to Anya, even after she had denounced her rightful title and ran off with the Russian who had brought her to Paris, Dmitry. No matter where they ran to, it seemed as if the Party was right behind them. Whether this was just paranoia or a serious concern made no difference to Anya, and it seemed of little importance to Dmitry who just wanted to continue running. Even when the Great Patriotic War broke out, the two continued to bob and weave out of various towns to avoid Dmitry’s conscription and their potential deportation. 

The Communist Party had been bad to Anya, so it made little sense to anyone when one day she decided to write the Soviet official who had spared her life. She wrote the letter after hearing part of Swan Lake one evening while walking home and seeing her daughter dance in the street to the tune, no care in the world and no understanding of the weight it held for her mother. 

The Communist Party had been bad to Anya, which was why she was so surprised when Gleb Vaganov wrote her back.


End file.
